On August 21st we did our second Rogue Photowalk. This time it was in a decidedly less urban area. It was in the middle of the desert and best described with GPS coordinates: 34.405285, -117.394270

The reason this location was selected was because there’s an old chimney protruding from the ground. The house it once heated has long since disappeared. All that’s left is the home’s foundation and this chimney.

It was a little hot, and the group was small with only three people. But we had a great time! Not shockingly, there was a starbucks five minutes away. So we ended the walk in my favorite way, with A/C and caffeine. Due to the size of the group, we decided that everyone would submit three images for the poll. Below are our nine images, please help us by voting for your favorite. The poll will close on September 5th at midnight. For a slideshow, click on the first image and it will pop up larger. From there you can click on the right or left sides to go back and forth through the images.

A - Foundation

B - Broken Glass

C - B&W Cactus

D - Beam Closeup

E - Quiet Up Front

F - Chimney

G - Can

H - That's Me

I - B&W Chimney

I’m very pleased to report that Danielle won the poll with the above picture! I’ve created a book containing the photowalk images. It can be viewed/purchased here: Rogue Photowalk Book. As her reward for winning the poll, Danielle will be getting the book for free.

For those of you that have posted your images from the walk online, please share them by leaving a comment to this post with a link to them. Mine can be seen here: Jon’s Sierra Madre Photowalk images

Thanks again to everyone that came out! I know I had a lot of fun. We’ve already had our second photowalk. I’ll be posting the poll to that sometime this weekend. I’ll announce the third photowalk in about two weeks. Going forward, the winner of the polls will select the time/location of the next photowalk. Feel free to monitor this page, which will contain the latest photowalk information: Rogue Photowalk Information

Hopefully we’ll see some of you and some new faces at the next one!

This dapper young man is named Ronan. Not, as I learned after the session, the stabbier version of the name, Ronin. Don’t get me wrong, Ronan is a cute name, and obviously very fitting for this little guy. However, there’s no denying that Ronin would be a pretty cool name for a boy! Give him a middle name of Danger and you’ve got a name that couldn’t fail! Right now my wife’s probably thinking that it’s a good thing she didn’t trust me to name our daughter. I probably would have named her Beatrix Kiddo.

As usual, my active little brain is distracting me from the task at hand. This was my first session with Ronan. His sister, Annika has worked with me before, as seen here. As usual, Annika was an excellent subject. Both kids make me look like I know what I’m doing. As you can see below, she’s grown a little.

Here’s my daughter, helping. In her way.

We scheduled this session around sunset. Some of it was shot with an SB-900 strobe on a stand, triggered with pocket wizards. But most of it is just natural light. Sometimes with kids it’s best to just simplify the photography situation and let them do their thing. The struggle at that point is to just keep up with them.

I really like this picture. She has a great look on her face. I like to look at it and think about what’s going through her head. Maybe she’s thinking something noble like “when I grow up, I want to be the President.” Or maybe she’s thinking of something more sinister and powerful like “when I grow up, I want to be the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.” I’m sure with the help of her brother, Ronin Danger, she could easily attain either of those positions.

At the end of our Rogue Photowalk, I asked everyone to submit their two favorite images to me. I was originally thinking of selecting my favorite image, but based on a suggestion from one of the other photographers, I’ve changed my mind. I’m doing a poll instead. At the end of the week (Saturday night) the winner of the contest will be whoever gets more votes in the below poll! This change (I hope) allows me to not receive any criticism for my judging abilities (or lack there of). It also (I hope) means that I can be a part of the poll.

The winner will be receiving something which will be announced at the same time that I announce the actual winner. In the very unlikely event that I win, the reward will be “split” with second place winner. It will make more sense when I announce what the “reward” is. So vote and pass this around! Good luck to everyone! The actual poll is at the very end of this post after all of the images. If you there are any questions, concerns, etc, please leave them as a comment to the post.

A - Theatre

B - White Flower

C - Metal Head

D - Firetruck

E - Cross

F - Sun Flower

G - Steeple

H - Statue

I - Palm Tree Silhouette

J - White Flower

K - How Cute

L - Pink Flower

This is a really last minute notice, but some friends and I are doing a photowalk tomorrow (7/24/10) in Sierra Madre (see map below). We’re meeting at 7am. If you’re available and awake, come on down! You don’t even need to own a camera, it will be fun just walking around.

Why is this considered “rogue?” On that same day there is an official World Wide Photowalk going on. I did officially request to lead a group. However, I was neither denied nor granted permission to do so. For various reasons we’ve decided to proceed with our photowalk anyway. I know, we’re bad people. Don’t judge too harshly. We mean no disrespect to the official photowalk and hopefully rejoin the fold next year. It’s not them, it’s not us, it’s the system.

No RSVP necessary. If you’re late, I suspect we’ll be easy to find.

Edit: Here’s a link to the images I took at last year’s official photowalk: Pasadena Photo Walk

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